Bone Wars - Kathy Tassini

As a follow-up our presentation on Haddonfield's Dinosaur, Hadrosaurous, Kathy Tassini gave us the "Rest of the Story'. Following discovery of our famous dinosaur, there was a rapid  growth of paleontology. During this rapid growth, two men vied for recognition as the greatest... that began the Bone Wars. They were Edward Drinker Cope (University of Pennsylvania) and Othniel Charles Marsh (Yale).

Both men used their own fortunes to finance their work to discover more bones and thus more and different dinosaurs.

Cope and Marsh started out ad friendly collaborators and marsh had stayed in Haddonfield meeting with Cope at his house.

But Marsh began paying the people that were digging up the bones from the same locations that Cope was using to send him (Marsh) the newly excavated bones.














And Marsh was having the bones shipped to him at he home in Yale.

This did not make Cope very happy. And they both started spending more money to discovery more bones faster that the other and publish their findings faster.

The net was that both men ran through their fortunes and had to seek buyers for their bones to support themselves. Cope's bones with offered to the U of P, but they wouldn't pay, so his bone went tot NYC. Marsh was able to sell his collection of bones to Yale.